Posts Tagged ‘Toonstruck’

You know that there are adventure games, and you know that some of those adventure games are better than others. But do you know which one is best, and which one is twenty-fifth best? Well, at last you can find out, with our definitive, unimpeachable breakdown of adventure gaming’s best moments.

It bothers me to my core that Toonstruck is not a more widely remembered and adored ’90s adventure. It deserves to be celebrated alongside LucasArts and Sierra, and yet so often goes forgotten. Thankfully, attention is being drawn to it once more as it finally arrives in GOG’s collection. It’s brilliant! You should play it.

A few weeks back I replayed Toonstruck for a retrospective, which led me to reading about it. And I discovered, having not heard before, that there was an unreleased sequel. The first game, already very long, had a lot of content cut, which was then to be reused in the follow-up. A lot of it already made, it was apparently reasonably close to completion. But Toonstruck, despite being a splendid point and click adventure, did not sell well, and any plans for a sequel were abandoned. Well, apparently if we still want it, we just have to ask.

Fourteen years old, Toonstruck has dated in some respects, primarily the scan-line FMV. But being cartoon, in others it remains as lovely today. The main trouble is how hard it is to get to run, requiring DosBox with special instructions, or Virtual Machine. Or better yet, and I’m increasingly tempted to do this, building a box out of ancient PC parts and installing Win 95 on it. Like Day Of The Tentacle, as I played it for Eurogamer I couldn’t help but take screenshots of everything. Below are but some of them. (You can have fun giving yourself a seizure by scrolling the first few images and watching them strobe.)

Eurogamer currently sports my retrospective of Toonstruck, the 1996 point and click adventure starring Christopher Lloyd and some cartoons. I went back to it having forgotten if I even liked it 14 years ago, and was absolutely delighted to discover that it’s fantastic. I say things like:

“In looking back at some of the best (and worst) adventure games of the eighties and nineties, it’s too easy to remain within the archives of LucasArts and Sierra. Perhaps Westwood’s Bladerunner gets quickly remembered, Cecil’s Broken Sword games, and someone will recall Adventure Soft’s Simon The Sorcerer games. But what about The Legend of Kyrania series, also from Westwood? Access’s Tex Murphy games? Microids’ Syberia? And what about Burst Studio’s Toonstruck? Why isn’t everyone talking about it? It’s absolutely bloody brilliant..”